Florida- Rap song taught in school, teacher expelled

[Bulldog Bats]

Not trying to denigrate him, but make a comparsion. There is a difference between just "writing for the masses" and being the top dog. Lucas made a number of extremely popular and good movies, and they certainly were not art films shown in out of the way theaters. Same way Shakespeare wrote many extremely popular plays and sonnets, but they were not considered high art in their time - like many look at them today.

 

[sophie]

Not trying to denigrate him, but make a comparsion. There is a difference between just "writing for the masses" and being the top dog. Lucas made a number of extremely popular and good movies, and they certainly were not art films shown in out of the way theaters. Same way Shakespeare wrote many extremely popular plays and sonnets, but they were not considered high art in their time - like many look at them today.

That's not really an accurate or valid comparison considering that people in late 16th century England had a VERY different understanding of and relationship to art than we have today.

 

[Angst]

I do not see why it is legitimate to expel a teacher for using rap music in class.

In primary school, we were presented two songs to showcase difference of discourse in popular music.


Link to video.

The song is about a girl who really wants to marry her daddy. It's sung as a schlager and while intended as naive and childishly innocent today it comes off as really creepy.

The other song I will not link due to censoring. (It sampled a woman simulating an orgasm and was quite popular with the people in our class.)

The point was to present two different historicities (for the lack of a better term, I'm really tired right now) and to make us more aware about the change in discourse and a change in understanding what is innocent and suitable today contrary to back then.

Rap music is part of our world today. And while this seems like a teacher's action of pragmatism, rap music opens to other sorts of analysis than Shakespeare allows. It should not be ignored on the grounds of it being icky to an overtly conservative or overtly precautious school board.

On the other hand. If this was a last resort of the teacher to try to teach the kids about similes etc, he seems a really poor teacher.

 

[Bulldog Bats]

Of course people change, but there has always been a popular culture, and we always think what came before us was more "serious". We romanticize the past. People wanted entertainment - I don't think people were bringing their children to Shakespeare plays or giving them Dickens' novels for educational purposes as they do now. It was entertainment.

Another example - Paganini, a famous violinist:

1. Would arrive to performances in black, tight fitting clothes (arrive in a black coach driven by black horses), and had long black flowing hair.
2. He was rumored to be involved with/possessed by the devil.
3. An exceptional musician, he played excessively showy, including intentionally playing with weak strings so they would break and he would have to finish difficult passages on just one string.
3. He was known as a womanizer, and was also rumored to have killed a woman and possessed her soul in his violin and used her intestines as guts for his strings.

Sounds like Led Zepplin to me (Jimmy Page would be proud).
http://www.guitarramagazine.com/NicocoloPaganini